An anonymous Australian academic, who tweets from a locked account as @snarkyphd, said: “I hire 20+ casuals /yr. Am clear when I can’t make promises, but lose great people to those who promise the world + don’t follow through.” And then: “What I observe is tendency to make promises to twice as many people as realistic so you don’t end up short staffed later on. So frustrating.” (I can’t embed her tweets in this post because her Twitter account is locked, but I do have her consent to share her words here.)

Naomi Barnes, in conversation with academic career guide Jo VanEvery, came back with another example:

@DrHelenKara@JoVanEvery I’ve had contract hours halved 1 week out from classes starting after knocking back work because I was committed elsewhere

Around this time I caught up with last week’s post from the Research Whisperer, written by Dani Barrington, on playing the academic game. She identifies ‘compromising my own values and the wellbeing of others’ as a common part of the ‘academic game’, which seems to parallel these conversations.

The last comment on my own post, last week, was from Jenni Brooks who is a senior lecturer in sociology in the UK. She says,

Thanks for writing this Kara. It’s important (but I confess slightly uncomfortable) reading for me, as someone in a permanent academic job in a university.

I realise that I’m often enthusiastic when I meet someone doing good work, and yes, if I’d love to work with someone, I will say. I hope that’s always accompanied by a qualification if there’s a chance things may never happen, but it’s quite possible that it isn’t, and that I too have promised things I can’t keep (I do always reply to my emails though, I promise!)

Being relatively new to a teaching (as opposed to research only) post, I’m still coming to terms with the ‘students above all’ mentality that means other things get put on the backburner sometimes, even if I’d rather they weren’t. For example, I was meant to be writing a funding bid with a friend in another university recently which, because of marking and other deadlines, just hasn’t happened. Neither of our jobs depends on it, so we’ll just do it later.

I wonder whether this very thing that you talk about does make me wary of working with people outside of the ‘university system’ though, whether that’s researchers, charitable organisations, or ‘service users’ (or whatever other appropriate term). I’m aware of the imbalance in funding/job security, and yes, it scares me if I feel in some way responsible for making sure someone else is paid – especially if I’m not entirely sure of how the system works. I’m also aware that this can (and has, in the past) made me seem ‘cagey’, and in some way like I’m trying to ‘protect university resources’, or ‘not share’ in some way.

I’m not entirely sure what my point is, but just wanted to say how thought-provoking your post was. I can see I need to do a lot of thinking about how to be a good ‘academic citizen’ (is that a thing?)

I think it is a ‘thing’. Evidently, so do many others. To be fair, independent researchers and scholars also need to be good citizens and colleagues. But as with all power imbalances, it is those who have the power who need to wield it carefully.

Share this:

Related

2 thoughts on “Broken Academic Promises”

Thank you again for writing this. I will try to address that last point in a post on my blog as it links in with other things I write about for more securely employed academics re. saying ‘no’, setting priorities, and so on. I’m sure Jenny is not alone.